The Oscar nominated animated short films and live-action short films are available to watch nationwide via ShortsTV in select movie theaters as of February 20, 2026. The showings usually last for over a month at most locations, even after the Oscars are given, so there is plenty of time to enjoy them. This year’s animated shorts are split almost 50/50 between general audience and adult-only with a warning for theater goers before the adult shorts air.
“The Three Sisters“ is a 2D dialogue-less animated short from Cyprus by multiple Oscar nominated Russian director, Konstantin Bronzit. Bronzit’s previous Oscar nominated shorts were Lavatory-Lovestory in 2009 and We Can’t Live Without Cosmos in 2016 which I reviewed at the time here. Bronzit submitted “The Three Sisters” under the pseudonym Timur Kognov when the film was making the rounds at festivals. He didn’t want his previous accolades or his name to influence the audience’s and judge’s perception of the film itself.
The story is about 3 sisters who live alone on foliage-less Island 5 in Greece somewhere in small Houses 1,2, and 3 that are lined up in a row with a small church hidden behind the houses. Their lives seem pretty isolated, routine, and dreary by the looks of things. All 3 sisters wear drab clothes and shawls on their heads and walk with their backs slouched down. A goods ship delivers them the supplies they need, but in tussle with some seagulls over a fish they had gotten makes the tallest and presumably eldest sister lose their satchel of coins off the dock and into the sea. Sadly, they lose most of their supplies to the tussle, and the rest weren’t paid for.
Unable to recover their satchel of coins, they have no choice but to offer House 1 for rent while the smallest youngest sister roomed with the middle sister in House 2. Surprisingly, the next day, a very large unkempt seafaring sailor rows up to the island and rents House 1 for several coins. He quickly disrobes himself when he realizes he stinks, much to the surprise of the 3 sisters, and moves into House 1. The youngest sister takes a large whiff of the stinky clothes and faints with a smile on her face! The other 2 sisters rush to get their fainted sister some water, but surprisingly, she’s okay. She picks up the lodgers clothes and locks herself in House 2. What’s going on?! What’s happening?! It reminded me a bit of Lord of the Flies, somewhat. You’ll just have to watch to see what that means.
“Forevergreen“ is another dialogue-less short beautifully rendered in CGI to look like like moving wood carvings. From Disney animators and best friends Jeremy Spears and Nathan Engelhardt of Zootopia fame, “Forevergreen” tells the story of an orphaned bear cub who is adopted by a large pine tree. The tree raises the cub as if it were its own offspring. It shelters the cub, feeds it pine nuts from its pine cones, and even teaches it about new life via a pine cone that sprouts a sapling. As time goes on, both the cub and sapling grow into a bear and a tiny tree. Everything changes one day though when the bear discovers a bag of potato chips that somehow get lodged in the pine tree’s branches. After getting one taste of potato chips, the bear becomes obsessed and tries to find more. The pine tree tries telling the bear it isn’t safe to go across the gorge to look for potato chips, but the bear doesn’t care. The bear no longer wants pine nuts, his pinecone teddy toy the tree made, or the little tree which it smashes. Is this the end of their bond? Based on The Prodigal Son, Forevergreen tells the tale of the bond between parent and child and what it means to love and forgive. The wood carving style of the short is based on Spears’ love of making wooden figurines as a hobby. The story reminded me a lot of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree except with a lot more dramatical ending.
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls“ is a Canadian stop-motion short directed by Chris Lewis and Maciek Szczerbowski. The story is about a grandfather in Paris telling his granddaughter about his most precious secret about a pearl she found in his study inside a shiny red enamel apple-shaped box. He tells her about when he was an orphaned street boy in early 20th century Montreal living off of small items and food he scavenged at the docks while squatting next to a small family consisting of a young girl, her frail sickly father, and an abusive cruel stepmother who was never satisfied with anything the girl did. Through a peephole in the wall, the boy would watch the poor girl get tortured by her stepmother while she cried herself to sleep at night where her tears would turn into pearls!
The girl, ashamed of her pearl tears, swept them into the broken wall and floorboard between her hovel and the empty room where the boy squatted, so the boy was able to retrieve a couple of her pearl tears. The boy tries selling them to a pawnbroker who, after consulting a jeweler who proclaimed they were nothing like anything he’s ever seen and priceless, lowballs the boy and offers him only a couple of dollars for them. The pawnbroker pressures the boy about where they came from, and the boy unwilling tells the tale of the girl’s pearl tears which the pawnbroker does not believe at first. When the jeweler tells the pawnbroker about the biblical tale of Eve’s tears turning into pearls, making them miraculous, the pawnbroker insists the boy make the girl cry for more.
The boy loves the girl though and doesn’t want her to cry. He even bought her a box of chocolates with the money he got from the pawnbroker to make her smile for the first time. The pawnbroker is persistent though, saying that money is the only thing that matters in the world and tries to threaten him in obtaining more pearls. Will the boy make the girl he loves cry for greed’s sake and possibly a better life for himself? The puppets look grotesque in nature, especially for the past story, to illustrate the almost Dickens’ like impoverished setting. The filmmakers used both traditional claymation and 3D plastic printed models that were scrubbed down and oil painted to give an aged weathered grim look to everything. It’s a haunting tale akin to any story by the Brothers Grimm.
The following are for adult audiences only due to disturbing subject matter and imagery.
“Butterfly (Papillion)“ is a French short from 70 year old French director Florence Miailhe, depicting the incredible real-life story of Alfred Nakache, an Algerian Jewish swimmer who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics under Hitler’s regime. Given the current political climate, this was a very difficult short to watch. We see an old black man swimming in the ocean doing the butterfly stroke. As he swims, past the fish and other sea life, he recalls his childhood as a young boy in Algeria learning to love the water and swimming. We see in his memories that he becomes a champion competitive swimmer and falling in love with another competitive swimmer who becomes his wife.
They immigrate to France where he experiences racism because of the color of his skin. In the Berlin Olympics, he wins gold despite the jeers from the Nazis for being black and Jewish. Back in France, he’s banned from competition for being Jewish, but his fellow competitors stand with him. He and his family try to flee France, but they’re caught and separated by the Nazis who send them to Auschwitz. Miaihe uses a signature technique of creating the animation by painting images directly under the camera’s lens onto a glass canvas with oil paints, pastels, and sand, giving the whole animation an impressionistic feel to it. You can literally see the brush strokes change and move on screen. With history repeating itself now, the victims may have changed, but the tale is the same.
“Retirement Plan“ is an Irish short from director John Kelly about a man named Ray, voiced by Domhnall Gleeson, who fantasizes about all the things he will do once he retires and has the time to do so from reading all his e-mails, playing all the video games he never had the time to start, finishing all the books he had started, cooking a leek after finding out what a leek looks like, etc.. Some of the things Ray wants to do are very adult which is why this short is in the adult category. The animation is very simplistic and minimalistic. It’s cute, funny, and philosophical.
One bonus short that wasn’t nominated, but was in the running for an Oscar nomination, was also played. It should have been shown with the general audience shorts before the nominated shorts, which had been done in the past, but for some reason, ShortsTV showed it at the end of the nominated shorts after the general non-adult audience left the theater already sadly. Whoever arranged this debacle should be smacked in the face.
“Eiru“ is an Irish short from Cartoon Saloon written and directed by Giovanna Ferrari. It’s the story of Eiru, a young precocious red-headed girl, who is the smallest child of an Iron-Age clan. All she wants to be is a mighty warrior just like everyone else in her clan, but sadly, the grown-ups still think she’s still just a little child with big dreams. One day, the village well mysteriously dries up. None of the adults can go down the well to investigate because they’re all too big to fit in the well. Only Eiru is small enough to fit, so she’s lowered down the well where she finds more than she ever expected. There’s a bit of mystery, misunderstanding, and hope.
Some of the shorts are available for viewing online for free if you can’t find a theater to watch the compilation. The winner will be announced on the Oscar broadcast on March 15, 2026, on ABC.
